How decisive are men v. women about ending marriages?
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Anonymous
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This is sort of a spin off to the "my heart hurts" thread, in which OP was dating a man who said he was getting divorced but who now seems to be unable or unwilling to pull the trigger.
I know that statistically, women initiate something like 70% of divorces in the US: even though women are more likely to end up worse off financially after divorce than men, they also seem more willing to just take the risk of ending their marriages. I am wondering also if women are just more decisive about this kind of thing than men? If a male friend said to me, "I have told my wife I want a divorce and I am going to move out and hire a divorce lawyer," I would think: yeah, sure you will. I would assume there was at least a fifty percent chance he would end up staying in his marriage. Not because I would think he was "lying" about his intentions, but just because my experience is that, despite gender stereotypes to the contrary, most men are averse to risk and change, and when push comes to shove, they default to status quo. However, if a woman friend said to me, "I have told my husband I want a divorce and I am going to move out and hire a divorce lawyer," I would think: yeah, she is going to move out and get divorced. Do you think this is generally true? If so, why? |
Anonymous
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By the time a man tells another man he is going to end his marriage he will.
A woman will hem and haw for years until she files and then will sometimes reconcile. |
Anonymous
| My best friend filed got divorce 10 days after he met and “fell in love” with a 27 years old woman. He is 47. I guess he had an extreme version of midlife crisis lol. Sadly we men sometimes loose our common sense when a younger woman pursues or us is receptive to our advances. |
Anonymous
I don't agree that women end up worse off. Otherwise they'd have to be stupid to initiate the majority of divorces. That aside, yes women are more decisive. There's nobody more cold and ruthless than a woman who decides she's done with you. The only proviso is she is likely to hang on and make her husband's life miserable until she has a better option available. Men have less ability to rationalize doing what they want if it will hurt the kids, whereas women will simply decide that what she wants to do is actually the best thing for the kids (even though it's not). Lastly men realize that finding someone else after a divorce is going to be tough for them, while women think it will be just like when they were single in their 20s and men were falling all over themselves to get her attention. Often as not women are unpleasantly surprised that their appeal has declined. |
Anonymous
I can't speak for other men but I did not tell anybody I was getting divorced until it was a done deal. In particular I did not want to take a chance that the information would get back to my kids until we'd told them in person ourselves. Can't imagine telling a female acquaintance or coworker anything that personal. |
Anonymous
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My ex husband came home one day and told me he wanted a divorce. He had professional movers move his things out 2 days later. He had a lawyer retained.
He was generous in mediation as he wanted the divorce. I read the other thread. That guy was stringing his mistress/side piece along. Plus who tells their side piece they are working on a marriage and going to marriage counseling while concurrently seeing the mistress. |
Anonymous
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I think men are less likely to file for divorce for amorphous unhappiness but more willing to divorce if there is a certain trigger or condition. From my own life and reading this board this could be:
Cheating- either the guy himself or the wife No sex for years Abuse, like actual abuse not just mean behavior Mental illness Wife has jeopardised the stability of the man’s career or life somehow Women seem more willing to work through things like this but less willing to tolerate long term unhappiness. |
Anonymous
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Once I decided "we can't go on like this" it was less than a week before I had an attorney lined up and had written out the major issues exDH and I had to work out. I told him I was leaving, whipped out a sheet of paper with issues to resolve (housing, kids, dog, etc.) told him to take some time to process it, came back two days later to iron out the issues, and then sent a copy to my attorney saying "this is how we want to break up, can you make it official/legal".
exDH had no desire to divorce and never would have initiated it though he understood why we needed to. |
Anonymous
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Women will try to for years to make the marriage work. If the Dh paid attention he would see that. But then a woman will go through the stages of grief and loss of the relationship while still married. Once they’ve mourned the end, they then file for divorce. By then it’s a done deal. They’ve cried, they’ve denied, they’ve been angry, they’ve accepted it, then they came out on the other side.
There’s no going back after that. Men will take action first, file the papers. But they have not thought about the loss yet. They have not gone through the emotions yet. That comes to them later, during the proceedings. Then it’s a decision to reconcile rather than put themselves through the hard process of going through the stages of loss and grief. |
Anonymous
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My ex husband filed for divorce after cheating on me.
He believed his friend from his high school years loved him for 25 years and ended up having an affair with her. As part of his affair rationalization, he told me we didn’t love each other for 10 years. That was news to me, because I always believed we loved each other, but were going through the strains of marriage with young kids, demanding jobs, stretched finances, etc. After announcing separation in VA, which started the one-year clock, I kicked him out for sexting in our house during separation in place. Couple of months later, he asked to stay married, but only for the kids. His proposition was that eventually our marriage would work out. That’s after he told his AP that she was his soulmate and after he sexted with her and promised he’d leave me for her. When we went to marriage counseling, he never said his goal was to save the marriage. His goal was to not hurt me. My goal was to save the marriage. We also met with a pastor, and he told the pastor that he no longer loves me as a wife. He told my dad there was nothing left to save and our marriage was over. So, he filed for divorce and we divorced a year ago. But guess what. He’s full of regret. He texts to say that he regrets what he did, blah blah blah. Would do anything to have his family back, blah blah blah. That’s after cheating, hurting me, refusing to work on our marriage and save our family. I told him I had no regrets at all because guess what, I tried to work on saving our marriage but you can’t really save it when you refuse to stop talking to your AP and text her saying she’s your soulmate and you want wait to wake up with her one day. So I have no regrets and I told him that. And now he’s angry. After telling him I don’t regret divorcing a man that no longer loved me, he was like, oh, we were in a loveless marriage anyway. There were millions of couples like us. No , jerk. Not every marriage that struggles involves a man having EA and PA … and then BLAMES me for the affair because “oh we didn’t love each other for 10 years.” He’s in this funny logic pretzel. He says the affair is his fault but “oh we didn’t love each other for 10 years. “ prior to the affair he didn’t communicate or say ANYTHING about wanting to work on our marriage or feeling neglected. He worked long hours and so did I. I truly hate how men think and make decisions. Based on my ex’s stupid texts, I’m assuming things didn’t work out with his AP. Of course! I told him their EA and PA was in a bubble, untested by life and children and finances. He was told that by pastors and friends. But he was defiant and indignant and sure he could relive 1997 and counting crows and Green Day with his AP. So, long story to say that my ex divorced me, but regrets it because his entire affair was rooted in stupidity, selfishness and foolishness. |
Anonymous
This. This is a major problem with online dating. Many people just using it for affairs and telling their dates another story. Tale as old as time but still it's a wonder so many women still put up with it. |
Anonymous
So many women put up with it. A woman I work with was seeing a guy, and we kept telling her he was still married, even though he told her he and his wife were separated, but the kind of separated while living in the same house. He wouldn’t ever see her in public — like they couldn’t go out to dinner — because he was afraid that the soon to be ex-wife would get all upset and cause craziness or something. So he would come over to my friend’s apartment , do you-know-what, and then leave. Never took her on a date, never spent the night. She actually thought he was her boyfriend, lol. She finally figured it out when she was snooping in the public records databases at work (we are lawyers) and saw that he had just closed on a new bigger fancier house, you guessed it, with his wife. She went on and on with this my “heart hurts” crap, too. We’d been telling her what was up from the beginning but she didn’t wanna listen. |
Anonymous
| I, a male, initiated our divorce and it was years coming and I waited until we became empty nesters and for my children to understand why, which they did. My ex was always in a state of anger and took it out on the kids first and then on me. I had plenty of time to prepare and I announced it and moved out within two days to a place I had rented. She wanted to make the divorce ugly but our kids told her I was doing the right thing and if she made it ugly they wouldn’t speak to her. There was no infidelity at least on my part, just years of frustration. That was three years ago and I’m happy and my kids live with me when they are visiting. |
Anonymous
| My wife was having affairs. I initiated the divorce. Thankfully, our last kid was about to go to college so I didn’t have to deal with custody/CS. She was surprised to finally get caught in one. Years of lies and betrayal. |
Anonymous
Sounds like she was cheating, no? Kids won’t usually stop talking/staying with their mother.. |